UDS 13.05: Ubuntu’s second online developer summit

It’s official, UDS 13.05 is coming up next month, marking our second online Ubuntu Developer Summit, and coming only two months after the last one. While going virtual was part of our transition to make Ubuntu’s development more open and inclusive, the other side of that coin was to start holding them more often. The first we put into affect in March, and the second is coming in May. Read below for information about this UDS, and changes that have been made in response to feedback from the last one.

Scheduling

The dates for UDS 13.05 are May 14, 15 and 16, from 1400 UTC to 2000 UTC. We will once again have 5 tracks: App Development, Community, Client, Server & Cloud and Foundations. The track leads for these will be:

App Development: Alan Pope, David Planella & Michael Hall

Community: Daniel Holbach, Nick Skaggs & Jono Bacon

Client: Jason Warner & Sebastien Bacher

Server & Cloud: Dave Walker & Antonio Rosales

Foundations: Steve Langasek

Track leads will be in charge of approving Blueprints and getting them on the schedule. If you are going to be responsible for running a session, please get with the track lead to make sure they have marked you as being required for that session. If you would like to get a session added for this UDS, you can do so either through registering a Blueprint or proposing a meeting through Summit itself. Both approaches will require the approval of a Track Lead, so make sure you discuss it with them ahead of time.

Changes to…

Using feedback from attendees of the March UDS, we will be implementing a number of changes for UDS 13.05 to improve the experience.

Hangouts

Google+ Hangouts have a limit of 15 active participants (if started with a Canonical user account, it’s 10 if you don’t have a Google Apps domain), but in practice we rarely had that many people join in the last UDS. This time around we’re going to encourage more people to join the video, especially community participants, so please check your webcams and microphones ahead of time to be ready. If you want to join, just ask one of the session leaders on IRC for the hangout URL. We are also investigating ways to embed the IRC conversations in the Hangout window, to make it easier for those on the video to keep track of the conversation happening there.

The Plenaries

Most people agreed that the mid-day plenaries didn’t work as well online as they do in person. There was also a desire to have a mid-day break to allow people to eat, stretch, or hold a sidebar conversation with somebody. So we are replacing the mid-day plenaries with a “lunch” slot, giving you an hour break to do whatever you need to do. We will be keeping the introductory plenary on the morning of the first day, because that helps set the tone, goals and information needed for the rest of the week. In addition to that, we have added back a closing plenary at the end of the last day, where track leads will be able to give a summary of the discussions and decisions made.

The Schedule

In addition to the above plenary changes, we have added an extra day to this UDS, making it 3 days instead of two. The last day will allow for overflow of sessions that couldn’t fit into 2 days, or the scheduling of follow-up session when it is determined they are necessary following a discussion earlier in the week.

Registration

Registration to attend will now be done in Summit itself, rather than through a Launchpad Sprint. So if you’re not a track lead, and you’re not registering Blueprints, there’s nothing you need to do on Launchpad itself. This will help those who do not have a Launchpad profile, though you will still need an Ubuntu SSO account to log in.

To register for UDS 13.04, go to the summit page, and just above the schedule you will see an orange “Register in Summit” button. If you don’t see that, you either need to log in to summit or you’ve already registered.

Summit Scheduler

Chris Johnston and Adnane Belmadiaf have been working hard to improve the Summit Scheduler website, taking feedback from attendees to improve the interface and workflow of the site. We will include as many enhancements as possible before the start of UDS 13.05. If you are interested in helping improve it, and you have some web development skills, please find them on #ubuntu-website on Freenode to find out how you can get involved.